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Shaping Smarter Cities: Broadcasting New Ideas Through the Data-Smart City Pod
Highlights
The Data-Smart City Pod, launched in 2021, is a podcast hosted by Harvard professor and former mayor Stephen Goldsmith. It brings on top innovators including industry, academic, and government officials to dive deep into data and innovation and discuss the future of cities.
15,000+
Podcast episode downloads
The Data-Smart City Pod publishes new episodes 15-20 times per year, serving as the central resource for cities at the intersection of government, data and innovation. Featuring guests chosen from the cutting edge of urban data and innovation practices, the podcast is a project of Data-Smart City Solutions, located at the Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University. It focuses on topics such as open data, predictive analytics, artificial intelligence, digital twins, smart infrastructure, and civic engagement technology.
Seeking to help every listener discover how to be “data smart,” the podcast dives deeply into local data projects. Listeners become better equipped to uncover and preemptively address civic problems through the podcast’s integrated, cross-organizational data and insights. The podcast has been downloaded more than 15,000 times by people in more than 100 countries across North and South America, Africa, Europe and the U.K., the Middle East, and Asia.
Guests include mayors from cities across the United States, including Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell, who discussed how to use data to understand residents’ concerns and overcome vaccine hesitancy; Baton Rouge Mayor Sharon Weston Broome, who talked about how the city utilizes GIS data to manage climate resiliency; and Tacoma Mayor Victoria Woodards, who laid out her strategies for embedding equity into aspects of municipal operations.
Other notable guests include author, professor, and urbanist Richard Florida; Jorrit de Jong, Director of the Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University and professor at Harvard Kennedy School; scholar and author Gregg Colburn; and Elizabeth Linos, Director of The People Lab and professor at Harvard Kennedy School.
Subscribe to the Data-Smart City Pod on Apple Music or Spotify.
Listen to some of the most popular Data-Smart City Pod episodes:
From the host
It's been rewarding to share our research in this new format and engage with listeners who might not hear some of these stories otherwise. Speaking directly to our audience and providing access to mayors or subject matter experts is aligned with our goal of sharing best practices and encouraging innovation at the city level.Stephen Goldsmith
Derek Bok Professor of the Practice of Urban Policy, Harvard Kennedy School; Director of Data-Smart City Solutions and host of the Data-Smart City Pod
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